web 2.0 x 100

just in case 23 things aren't enough, i came this link on twitter...more web 2.0 than you could shake a stick at...

week 6....library thingummy...

registered for library thing...added some books to my library...got a bit sad about how few books i've read for pleasure in the last few years...i've been doing part-time courses and i just can't do books while i'm studying - turn into a magazine/newspaper reader which is what i think i am at heart anyway...it also made me think of nick hornby's book reviews where he lists books bought and books read...the first time i read those i found it really reassuring because i'm a demon for buying books when i've tons of unread ones at home...

facebooked

well another long break and not too many 'things' done...so i'll just fill the gap with some idle chatter...usually find it works...

Credit: Geeklogie

so on to facebook...i'm still one of the unconverted i'm afraid...i think it might be a generation thing - younger people seem much more comfortable putting themselves out 'there'...mark zuckerburg says that the 'age of privacy is over' and maybe he's right...when researching stuff for my course i'm often amazed at how much you can find out about authors, through their blogs or websites or whatever...it seems the norm in the US particularly to have an online portfolio to put yourself out there, like a CV or whatever...i don't think i'm ready for that, but maybe it'll come over here after a while like most things...but getting back to facebook, i've recently closed my account which i had for a year or so...a good few of my friends have accounts but i found it a bit repetitive as my 'wall' was full of postings by the same few heavy users (not in the trainspotting sense, i just mean they write on facebook a lot)...posting about this and that but nothing in particular...when i did contact people on it i used to use the private messaging thing anyway so in the end i thought why bother...basically i'm just cranky...

as i said before i don't tend to follow people i know in 'real' life' on twitter so i don't find the same problem there as i usually have a reason for following them...that probably sounds like i'm a stalker or something...maybe i AM....WHO KNOWS....

dewey decimal rap

we should use this in our library inductions next year...

tagxedo only...

i thought i'd written enough waffle to try a word cloud...wordle was playing tricks on me so i used tagxedo...v easy and fun...got a bit obsessive about the shape and colour options so had to step away from the screen...

so-shall we network?...groan...week 5...

well i haven't crawled around my web 2.0 much in the last week or so but i thought i would post some drivel about social networking to try and get things moving again...

watched the socialnomics video...interesting...i'm not sure i see social networking as a marketing tool for institutions...i think it would be more useful for communication with their 'live' community...say for students or alumni looking for campus news, rather than school leavers looking for a prospectus...although i'm liable to change my mind about that so don't quote me on it...oh i forgot you couldn't anyway because i'm ANONYMOUS!!!!!  ANONYMOUS!!!!!

twitter i really like, though i don't connect with friends on it at all, and i've never tweeted...so i'm probably not using it in the true 'social network' sense...i just follow accounts on it, some work, some study and some play...i find it a really cool way to keep up to speed in different things....although tweets are only 140 characters, very often they'll point towards an interesting article or site that i wouldn't have seen otherwise...there are lots of librarians and IT people who use it in that way...the librarians i follow tend to be at the more 'techy' end of libraries, so it may be that that community is quicker to use it than others...also, at times it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff...i think it's good to do a 'weed' of accounts you follow every now and then...

that's all for now...thanksbetojaysis says you...

something for the weekend...

walkin in a wiki wonderland

i think that's probably the worst blog post title of all time...anyway, swiftly moving on...read the 7 things about wikis and looked at the common craft vid too...thing 8 already would you believe?...yes you would says you, on thing 91 or something...bah...

i kind of knew what wikis were but hadn't used one actively, beyond looking at wikipedia...i thought the educause article was a good read and pretty balanced in showing some of the pitfalls...i can definitely see that they could be useful and maybe easier than emailing files or even a shared folder or whatever...think there would need to be groundrules about how they are used if it was in work...i could see myself getting all uppity if someone edited or deleted some pearl of wisdom i had written...i'd probably throw a strop and do something mad like put a 3 hour loan down in the junior section...i think i've said too much...

the common craft video was cool too...it struck me that wikis could be useful for committees where you have people from different areas or depts working on joint projects or documents...that's all i have for now i think...i'm sure some other half-baked ideas about wikis will come to me after i've partaken in a discussion or two over on the 23 things one...did someone say baked...mmm...

funny strange...

so this is my attempt at the comic strip...i won't give up the day job...i had a bit of trouble saving it in bitstrip so i've just done a copy and paste...hope this turns out ok...

r.s.s.p.e.c.t....week 3...

i have used rss feeds myself...i think they're great...though it is easy to end up overwhelmed with the amount of new stuff since you last checked in...think you have to be fairly choosey in what you subscribe to...i have a smartphone recently and have downloaded a free rss app for it which means i can check it when i'm on the run...sorry i meant on the move...i haven't robbed a bank like...honest...

all (web 2.0) things mustn’t pass

just some thoughts about delicious' change of ownership...there was some doubt for a while about whether or not yahoo would find a buyer.  yahoo had gone through this before with geocities, a web hosting service - it went out of fashion, became unprofitable for them to maintain so they closed it down and lots of people lost a lot of content...I think the bad press they received about that episode probably made them less inclined to do the same thing with delicious, and in the end it found a home and all worked out fine…yay…but it could have been bad...boo...

for the most part i really like web-based tools but they do have implications for content storage and preservation...the sites or companies hosting it may not do it forever...a lot of the time maybe storage isn't a priority but other times it might be...last month library of congress committed to preserving twitter’s entire archive...it seems like a good model for getting around some of those problems...i oh i don't know...leave me alone...

by the way, is anyone else's blogger still playing up on them a bit?  maybe it's just out to get me...

and another ‘thing’...

on to social bookmarking...set up a delicious account...i bookmark stuff quite frequently when i see a page i think i'll want to revisit...i can see it would be handy if like me you use more than one machine, though it’s a pity there's no folder structure to save on scrolling through a lot of pages.  i think I'd only use it as a back-up list to my 'real' bookmarks for that reason.

i liked the way you can look at other people’s site listings…just for the craic I searched for a few people I follow on twitter (getting ahead of myself) on it and found they had set up pages  - it was cool to see what sites they recommend all in one list.  From that I ended up clicking down through loads of subject tags, like a subject portal for urls.

it has obvious uses for the teacher/student thing though lecturers or teachers might be more inclined to use something like moodle to recommend sites to their students as it’s a more defined ‘space’ for that kind of interaction.  maybe.

Haven't set up a diigo account yet...so no diig-itty there....groan...

some things are done

in my earlier blog (the one that is under  the earthquake rubble) i had gone through the first few things...

blogs - i find blogger quick and easy to use.  i follow a good few blogs, i'll try and stick them up here when i get a minute.

gmail  - i have my own account though i created a new one for this.  i actually don't use it much for mailing but find it handy for google docs and some of their other free bits...though i saw it said somewhere last week that if you're not paying for a service then you're not the customer, you're the thing being sold...far out dude...

igoogle - my 1st cheat...have used it before but didn't like it so much and didn't bother going through it again.  i found i didn't like everything being thrown at me in one page, at least not the second i open my browser.  i think i'm just easily confused.

so that's me caught up with where i was i think.  fancy a pint?  no, me neither...

a shak(e)y start

so i'm a bit late beginning this...i'm just pacing myself...honest...it'll be like the tortoise and the hare...though i think it was the hare who gave the tortoise a head start wasn't it...that makes me the hare does it? crap.  never liked that story anyway.  everyone knows tortoises can't talk.

actually this is my second attempt at getting on board...my first blog was eaten up by the blogger earthquake the other day...i believe it still might be recovered from underneath the rubble but but i've got tired waiting so have decided to start a new one.  i'm quite fickle like that.

anyway, 23 things...i have dabbled in some of these web 2.0 things before but some more than others and some not at all...either way it's often good to have a second look at things so i'll try not to cheat...much...

hey ho

hello world.  tis me blog, to be sure.  for d'twenty tree tings.